World powers began a new round of high-level talks with Iranian officials yesterday, trying to find a way out of a years-long tussle over Tehran’s nuclear program and its feared ability to make atomic weapons in the future.
Few believe the latest attempt to forge a compromise will yield any major breakthroughs, but negotiators are optimistically casting it as a steppingstone toward reaching a workable solution.
Officials described the latest diplomatic discussions as a way to build confidence with Iran as the country steadfastly maintains its right to enrich uranium in the face of harsh sanctions.
“The offer addresses the international concern on the exclusively peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program, but it is also responsive to Iranian ideas,” said Michael Mann, spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who is leading the negotiations. “We’ve put some proposals forward which will hopefully allow Iran to show some flexibility.”
Mehdi Mohammadi, a member of the Iranian delegation, said Tehran was prepared to make an offer of its own to end the deadlock but will resist some of the West’s core demands.
The Obama administration is pushing for diplomacy to solve the impasse but has not ruled out the possibility of military intervention in Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Israel has threatened it will use all means to stop Iran from being able to build a bomb, potentially as soon as this summer, raising the specter of a possible Mideast war.
A senior US official at the talks said Monday that some sanctions relief would be part of the offer to Iran but refused to elaborate. The new relief is part of a package that the US official said included “substantive changes.”
The official acknowledged reports earlier this month that sanctions would be eased to allow Iran’s gold trade to progress, but would neither confirm nor deny they are included in the new relief offer, and spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomatic talks more candidly.
In a statement before the talks began Tuesday, the Interfax news agency cited Russia’s envoy as saying the easing of sanctions was possible only if Iran can assure the world that its nuclear program is for exclusively peaceful purposes.
“There is no certainty that the Iranian nuclear program lacks a military dimension, although there is also no evidence that there is a military dimension,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.
China’s Foreign Ministry said diplomacy offered the only route to resolve the dispute and called for all sides to show flexibility.
“We think the Iranian nuclear issue is very complicated and sensitive. All parties should have firm confidence in peacefully resolving the issue through dialogue and negotiation and take an objective and pragmatic attitude,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Beijing.
Interfax cited an unidentified Iranian delegation member as saying Iran might also hold one-on-one talks with Russia, but ruled out direct negotiations with the United States in Almaty.
Officials from both sides have set low expectations for a breakthrough in Almaty — the first time the high-level negotiators have met since last June’s meeting in Moscow that threatened to derail the delicate efforts.
While Mann acknowledged the Almaty talks would unlikely lead to a firm, he insisted that it remained an important steppingstone toward a definitive solution.
“We’re not interested in talks just for talk’s sake. We’re not here to talk, we’re here to make concrete progress,” he said.
Over the last eight months, the international community has imposed harsh economic sanctions on Iran that US officials said have, among other things, cut the nation’s daily oil output by 1 million barrels and slashed its employment rate. Western powers have hoped that the Iranian public would suffer under sanctions so the government would feel a moral obligation to slow its nuclear program.
